[samirmenon]

The article never actually specifies whether the "mostly black and Latino" women who digitize the books are treated as independent contractors. It implies it, by launching into a section on Mechanical Turk, Uber, TaskRabbit, etc, but never actually discusses the book digitizers.

[hypatiadotca]

"yellow badges" are contractors at Google.

[TheCoelacanth]

They are contractors, but are they independent contractors? I think it's more likely that they are employees of a staffing firm that Google contracts out to for workers rather than independent contractors that Google contracts directly.